The NASA-designed perfume that smells like space

Eau de Space, an American company based in San Francisco, has obtained the fragrance formula that smells like the space produced by NASA to get astronauts used to the environmental conditions of the International Space Station.The perfume is now at the center of a Kickstarter campaign to start industrial production. The creator of the fragrance is chemist Steve Pearce who, in view of astronaut training, developed it over the course of four years – a project initiated by NASA in 2008 is to recreate increasingly realistic simulations of life in orbit. The fragrance, in fact, has existed since 2012 but its formula had not been made available to the public until now. 

To create it, Pearce relied on the testimonies of astronauts who described the smell of space in various terms but with a common denominator: the smell of burnt ozone. In a 2002 CNN interview, astronaut Peggy Whitson described it as "kind of smoky and a little harsh, bitter-smelling" and also "like a smell from a gun, right after you fire the shot." Don Pettit described it in 2003 to National Geographic as "a sweet metallic sensation" similar to welding fumes. Other descriptions have compared it to hot metal, raspberries, rum and burnt steaks.